SaaS Pricing Models Tactics and Design

Let’s Improve your SaaS Pricing Models

For immediate consultation and advice on all things SaaS, schedule at least a 15-minute meeting with me via Clarity. If you feel a more involved engagement is required for me to help you, email me with the specifics of your situation (as much detail as you’re comfortable giving) and we’ll setup a meeting to work through the particulars.

Let’s Improve your SaaS Pricing

For immediate consultation and advice on all things SaaS, schedule at least a 15-minute meeting with me via Clarity. If you feel a more involved engagement is required for me to help you, email me with the specifics of your situation (as much detail as you’re comfortable giving) and we’ll setup a meeting to work through the particulars.

Let’s Improve your SaaS Pricing

For immediate consultation and advice on all things SaaS, schedule at least a 15-minute meeting with me via Clarity. If you feel a more involved engagement is required for me to help you, email me with the specifics of your situation (as much detail as you’re comfortable giving) and we’ll setup a meeting to work through the particulars.

Do you ever wonder why, even though you offer an amazing SaaS or Web App that meets a real market need, you’re not reaching your sales and revenue goals?

Stu from Project Bubble did, too, and within 30 Days of joining Free Trial Dominator he increased his free-to-paid conversions a MASSIVE 240%… and he even shared with us exactly what he did to achieve such a massive conversion rate boost so quickly… and you’ll get full access to his presentation when you become a Premium Member!

Look, you aren’t alone if you feel like – even though you worked hard, created amazing content, made a bunch of cold calls, and bought a bunch of traffic – you’re just not hitting your sales numbers you thought you would!

I know it’s killing you that even though you’ve spent time, money, and resources on SEO and on-site conversions to get people to sign-up to try out your product for 15 or 30 days (or longer!), you STILL aren’t making the sales you need to be making!

The fact is, your SaaS or Web App is Failing to Convert Free Trial Users to Paying Customers because you didn’t DESIGN it to Convert Customers… but you can fix that… and I’ll show you how!

What would happen to your Revenue (and Profit!) if you lifted your Free Trial Conversion Rate by just 5%? How about by 15%? What about by 400%?

A 400% Conversion Rate Increase!“Lincoln says to always ask for the sale through the entire process… and for us, this advice resulted in an almost IMMEDIATE conversion rate bump of 400% and a 70% drop in Customer Acquisition Costs. To put this in financial terms, we were spending around $20 per signup before and that just dropped to about $6. That is huge huge huge.” Nick Friend, CEO, Iconosites

And what would happen to Customer Lifetime Value if you lifted the Average Selling Price, shortened the sales cycle, and REDUCED Customer Acquisition Costs while you increased your Conversion Rate?

Well, whether you know it or not, a low overall conversion rate almost always points to your Free Trial as the culprit… but together we can fix that!

I’ll show you exactly what Nick – and other successful SaaS and Web App vendors – used to get such amazing results when you when you become a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member!

In fact, as a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member, you’ll have access to the strategies and tactics I developed after spending literally 1000’s of hours working with the SaaS, Web App, Cloud, and Software companies from around the world – from Billion-dollar, multi-national corporations to the earliest startups.

Stop Hunting for Answers; Start Converting Customers!

I realize that the DIY spirit is alive and well among SaaS and Web App founders, entrepreneurs, and pros. I get that this DIY way of thinking doesn’t just include the building of your app, the creation of your marketing site, etc… it also includes pulling together the information on how to do those things.

But that is a waste of time; a waste of time that is costing you money right now!

I also know that you aren’t used to getting your information the way that I present it in the Free Trial Dominator and that in ‘this industry’ things aren’t done like this; I get that, but I don’t care… I’m changing it up!

Isn’t it interesting that, while Free Trials are hardly new and every SaaS or Web App vendor offers one, finding out what has worked for others, pulling together industry best practices (that don’t seem to exist), and then – if you actually find something – trying to figure out how to apply that to your situation isn’t easy?

The harsh reality is this… even if you did go looking for answers; they aren’t out there! I know, I’ve looked. And so have every single one of the Free Trial Dominator Premium Members before they joined!

Don’t think of me as a ‘Consultant’… I hate that moniker too… just think of me as someone that’s done the heavy-lifting for you. I’ve found the answers you’re looking for to help you improve your Free Trial conversion rates and made them available to you when you become a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member.

See Exactly what You get as a Free Trial Dominator Member

I put together this short video to show you EXACTLY what’s behind the paywall that you’ll get access to as a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member:

As you can see, the Free Trial Dominator content is NOT just a bunch of generic ideas with no actionable substance.

Nope, I’m giving you full access to the “Secret Sauce” that I’ve previously only shared with my private clients.

In fact, during the LIVE Group Coaching sessions (I’ll tell you more about that in a minute) I work directly with Free Trial Dominator Premium Members to coach them through the process EXACTLY as I would someone paying me 100x the cost of this program.

In addition to the Group Coaching, as I showed in the video, the Free Trial Dominator program has 2 other parts and as a Premium Member, you get access to everything.

7-Step Guide to get you Started with Free Trial Optimization

When you become a Free Trial Dominator member, the first thing you do is go through the “Getting Started” guide. This is where I introduce you to the core concepts behind Free Trial Optimization, get you to build your Free Trial Profile, and then work to analyze and troubleshoot your Free Trial to see where the bottlenecks are (and then fix’em!).

If you’re a pre-launch or early-stage startup, this guide is super-important to you since it shows what data you need to be collecting so you can actually measure and manage Free Trial conversion performance once you’re in-market.

The “Getting Started Guide” is made up of videos (or .mp3 audio files if you’d like to listen on the go), text, and spreadsheets to get you on the path to Free Trial Optimization with these steps:

Gather Baseline Data

Understand the Context of the Baseline Data

Map Out Your Existing Free Trial Sign-up Process

Map Out Your Existing Conversion Process

Analyze Your Baseline Data

Create The Domination Plan

Go Deep and become a true Free Trial Dominator!

Step 7 is where you bust out on your own and at your own pace looking to Dominate your Free Trials!

This is where you start to tackle the bottlenecks in your Free Trials by learning the deeper meaning behind Free Trials, the Strategies and mindset required for Free Trial super-success, and the tactics to take you from a Free Trial Optimizer to a true Dominator! Become a Premium Member today!

Advanced Content that’ll turn You into a real Free Trial Dominator!

The content that you’ll have access to as a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member is super-actionable, value-packed, and (very) Frequently Updated.

Most of all, it is all about on how to make your Free Trial successful!

Check out what some current Free Trial Dominators say about the content alone:

150 New Leads per Month (up from ZERO)!“What I really like about the Free Trial Dominator program is the email marketing tactics section that resulted in 150 new high-value leads per month… that worked great for us! Lincoln, you challenge the status quo and you’ve made our Free Trial more effective!” – Jim Schultz, President AES Education

“The things I really like about the Free Trial Dominator program are Lincoln’s insights and the content library! The ability to go to website and watch all the videos, including the Group Coaching sessions I missed while I was on travel. Now I can go in catch up! It has made me realize a lot of things that need to be done!” – Sameer Bhatia, CEO ProProfs

“I love the insights that have made me to think differently about free trials. There were several things that I hadn’t even considered before (or heard anyone talk about). The content is awesome and I like the delivery of it (both video and text).” – Ruben Gamez, Bidsketch

“I am recommending my team view the content because its one of the few resources that provides a reliable insight into how to improve the trial sign up process.” Mathew Meyers, CEO Vision6 / Co-Founder OfferedLocal

Here is a detailed look at the content you get access to as a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member:

Free Trial Strategy

Right now, there are about 50 (epic) posts, nearly 5 hours of streaming video / .mp3 files to download, and great insights from FTD members arcoss these 5 categories (including the Four Phases of a Free Trial).

The Free Trial Mindset Shift – Shifting from Reactive to Proactive

Attention Phase – A successful Free Trial starts with attracting the right crowd, and that’s what this phase is all about

Engagement Phase – Here we talk about how to get people to use your app; tons of examples and more added all the time as FTD members share their updates with the group.

Investment Phase – The goal is to get your Free Trial users to become so invested that conversion is a no-brainer; and this section – and interviews with / presentations by – FTD members and successful SaaS & Web app vendors shows exactly how to do that.

Conversion Phase – Free Trials have one job to do: convert customers to paying customers. This section covers all the ways to ask for and get the sale.

Free Trial Domination Tactics

300% Price Increase – No Lost Sign-ups!“By implementing Lincoln’s Pricing Page recommendations, we were able to raise our prices by 300% without any negative impact on the rate of sign-ups!”” – Daniel Barnett, CEO, WORKetc

It is one thing to have a high-level overview of Free Trials… but once you have that, it’s time to take action; and you take action with Tactics. These tactics use those in the Strategy section (that were there mostly to illustrate high-level points) as the jumping-off point and take you DEEP into the inner workings of some of the core elements of SaaS & Web App marketing.

Pricing Page / Marketing Page / Sign-up Form Design – This is an extension of the Attention phase and in addition to Free Trial Dominator-specific content includes the FULL, COMPLETE, and UPDATED Pricing Page Success Formula product I used to sell on its own for $497! I also threw in the Beta Testing & Pricing Master Class videos.

Traffic Generation / Distribution Methods – From an exclusive interview with the world’s best AdWords guy Perry Marshall to a guide of ~100 places to market your Web App, if you don’t see a spike in traffic, you’re not taking action!

Email Marketing for Free Trial Success – This is the most complete Email Marketing Guide for SaaS & Web Apps anywhere on the planet (it should be a stand-alone product). It covers everything from how to reach out to potential customers, cold but at scale, and covers how to create a Free Trial sequence AND transactional email messages that convert! This stuff simply doesn’t exist anywhere else!

Super Ninja Tactics – Where I have awesome tactics that don’t fit a category or transcend a specific category, I put them here.

Plus…

Additional Resources and Tools – Tons of links to articles that I’ve found to be helpful, spreadsheets, books, and other stuff that I think can help you.

Complete Group Coaching Call Video Archive – Over 20 hours of video, and growing, but I try to break out individual coaching sections and link to them from the sections they best fit (for example, if we talk about email marketing, I’ll link to that section in the Email Marketing category) but you can find the complete archive here. Most have streaming video and .mp3 versions.

The streaming videos in the Free Trial Dominator program can play on any device – including iPhone and iPad thanks to Wistia (also a FTD member, BTW) – and are accompanied by a .mp3 audio version, notes, screen caps, examples, links, and ongoing updates after the videos were published and where it makes sense.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say you simply cannot find anything else like this anywhere, period.

But the content is just one piece of what makes being a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member such a competitive advantage for you.

Be Part of a Community of Success-Focused SaaS & Web App CEOs, owners, pros, & entrepreneurs

“Having other folks in the same boat is a nice change (versus the typical “startup” group with a bunch of un-launched products, no customers, etc.).” – Dave Churchville, CEO, ClientSpot

“I get to hear what like minded people are up to as it gives me ideas for my product.” – Mark Wilson, The Test FactoryYou’ll join an active Community of real-life SaaS & Web App pros, executives, and owners from around the world who share their experiences in our Private, Members-Only Discussion List.

The community is active and talks about anything to do with running and marketing a SaaS or Web App business.

From topics like “Do you require a credit card to start a trial?” to “Should you put a phone number on your website?” to “What tools do you use to run your SaaS business?” the topics are great and the details that your peers are willing to share is amazing.

So many great SaaS & Web App companies at different stages sharing what works, what doesn’t, and giving insight to Founders, Executives, and SaaS Pros that previously was unavailable.

As I’ve heard from several Free Trial Dominator Premium Members… “As a single founder, I’m not alone anymore!” And you don’t have to be alone either when you become a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member today.

But it isn’t just the Community that keeps you from being alone; the live Group Coaching fills that need nicely!

Participate in LIVE Group Coaching Sessions

“What I really like about the Free Trial Dominator program is the sharing of real world examples in the webinars and the opportunity to network with and learn from others in the forum. It works really well when some are ahead of and some are behind where we are. I’ve already been helped and helped others in side conversations.” – Steven Mallows, GroupQuality

“Your Group Coaching sessions are also great, because it is more like scheduled “Staff Meetings”, which makes it great reason to attend and learn and share, even if we have had a good or bad week, minimum or maximum progress.” – Kevin Shahbazi

“The interactivity and feedback are great. I work pretty much solo on my business, so getting advice, guidance and honest feedback is extremely useful for me. I’ve found it incredibly useful and think others working on a SaaS product would too.” – Tekin Suleyman, Crowd.fm

“I like that we meet frequently. You hold your course really easy to understand. Especially for me this is very good because I am from Austria and speak german. But I can follow you very easy. 10 Points out of 10! I will recommend you to a friend of mine who also started to build a SaaS! I’ll tell him that he will loose a lot of money if he won’t join your program!” – Norbert StrapplerIt’s very simple… as a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member you are invited to attend the LIVE Group Coaching Call one or two Wednesdays @ Noon Eastern each month via GoToWebinar.

And if you want to be a “coachee,” on the call, you simply sign-up to secure your spot… or you can just attend live and see others get their coaching.

Be a ‘Coachee’ and learn from Me… and Your Peers

Each Group Coaching session is dedicated to a specific Phase of the Free Trial: Attention, Engagement, Investment, or Conversion. For example, if your issue is that you aren’t getting enough traffic to your site for example, as a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member, you can sign-up to be a coachee when the topic is “Attention Phase.”

When you attend the Group Coaching session as a coachee, I will work with you to review your current website, to troubleshoot your sign-up process, to review mock-ups for your new in-app engagement, or to talk about your Pricing Page or Sign-up Page design… whatever issue your dealing with at the time we can work on.

Special Guest Coaches Add Amazing Value

But it isn’t always just me sharing knowledge and coaching you. As a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member you’ll learn from awesome Guest Coaches that will share their knowledge on the topic of the day with you.

Sometimes it will be SaaS or Web App vendors that are crushing it and getting massive conversion rates, other times it will be domain experts on subjects that will help you.. and other times we’ll have vendors who will share with you how they help their customers increase traffic, engagement, or conversions.

Get Value even if you just Lurk

I get it… some people don’t want to share what they think are their trade secrets with the group. So even if you don’t think you’ll ever sign-up as a coachee, as a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member you can still join each session to see what others are struggling with and hear the the suggested fixes, or just to learn how other SaaS and Web App vendors have solved a problem or taken advantage of an opportunity and are crushing it… from the vendor themselves (not just me!)

But don’t let your not wanting to share keep you from joining in! Remember, you can provide feedback to the coachees, too! What you know might just help someone else avoid the problems you’ve encountered in the past!

Here’s the Not-So-Typical Risk Reversal Section

This is the section of the sales letter where I try to get past any last defenses you’ve put up by offering to Reverse the Risk.

100% Guaranteed to help Increase Conversions… or your Money Back!

First, I am probably required to tell you that the results you see from other Premium Members of Free Trial Dominator on this page aren’t typical. Or when I show case studies or tell stories of success, those aren’t typical, either.

Those results aren’t typical because – frankly – most people don’t take action; they don’t actually do what they know will work. So I can’t make any guarantees or claims that you’ll increase conversions if you don’t take action.

What I can say is this: if you actually take the time to understand the strategies and tactics I show you in Free Trial Dominator, you implement what I show you and you fail to increase free-to-paid conversions, I’ll give you your money back! All I ask is that you show me what you tried first, okay?

Once I see what you did or didn’t do that caused the failure, I’ll either help you fix what didn’t work or, if you’d prefer, I’ll give you your money back. Your choice, but I’d rather see you succeed than get a few bucks back. Either way, no hassles from me.

No Contracts… Cancel Anytime!

Here’s the terms & conditions for Free Trial Dominator; There is no contract and no commitment; you just pay month-to-month in advance and you can cancel anytime no questions asked. Easy. Simple. Transparent.

Now we move into the Social Proof section where I remind you in a big way that you’re not alone and not the first one to take the leap of faith and invest in Free Trial Dominator.–

As a Free Trial Dominator Member, You’ll be in GREAT Company…

“How Do I Sign Up?” you ask…

It’s simple… email me or give me a call at (972) 200-9317 and let’s get to know each other. I want to make sure that you’re a good fit for Free Trial Dominator and I’m sure you have some questions for me. If we feel good about moving forward, I’ll send you a link to sign-up… it’s that easy.

Wait… why is there no Free Trial of Free Trial Dominator?

Ah yes… the fact that I don’t offer a “Free Trial” is the great irony, right? Well… not really, if you think about it.

While the psychology of Free Trials is the same regardless of the business offering the Free Trial, there’s a big difference between content/consumption and SaaS/production businesses. I never recommend free trials for content unless the system is setup to “drip” or otherwise limit access to content and since my system isn’t built that way – you actually get access to everything instantly – I offer a discounted paid trial rather than a free one.

If you have questions that I didn’t answer here, please feel free to email or call me anytime!

If you’re like a typical SaaS provider, a substantial amount of your sales are online which means your SaaS Free Trial Conversion Rates are directly correlated with revenue. A poor performing Free Trial means you have lower revenue than you should… and that’s a problem.

I put together this list of my best resources to help you improve your SaaS Free Trial Conversion Rates and grow your business.

Let’s Optimize your SaaS Free Trial Conversion Rates

For immediate consultation and advice on all things SaaS, schedule at least a 15-minute meeting with me via Clarity. If you feel a more involved engagement is required for me to help you, email me with the specifics of your situation (as much detail as you’re comfortable giving) and we’ll setup a meeting to work through the particulars.

I recently gave my clients some interesting questions to ask themselves… and I thought you might want to ask yourself these questions, too.

If someone looks at your marketing site – main page, pricing page, sign-up page, whatever – for 5 seconds, what will they think your app does?

If your ideal customer looks at your site – for 5 seconds or even 5 minutes – will they know they’re your ideal customer?

Are you reaching your ideal customers where they are in their Buying Cycle and doing so with an appropriate call to action?

Are you reaching your ideal customers where they are on the Awareness Ladder and doing so with an appropriate call to action?

In case you aren’t familiar with the “Awareness Ladder” concept, it comes from the amazing book “Breakthrough Advertising” by Eugene Schwartz, first published in 1966 (a book, BTW, that I keep by me all the time; it is even MORE relevant today!).

The ladder looks like this, from the top rung to the bottom one:

You need to know where the people in your market are on the Awareness Ladder so you can speak to them where they’re at and provide the appropriate call to action.

If they don’t even know they have a problem, you probably shouldn’t try to close them.

If they are convinced, you probably don’t need to get them to understand your benefits.

Understanding where your market is on the Awareness Ladder can absolutely transform your sales pipeline from a weak trickle to a powerful deluge!

Let’s Grow Your SaaS Company

For immediate consultation and advice on effective growth strategies and tactics for your SaaS company, schedule at least a 15-minute meeting with me via Clarity. If you feel a more involved engagement is required for me to help you, email me with the specifics of your situation (as much detail as you’re comfortable giving) and we’ll setup a meeting to work through the particulars.